'Air Display' to Let You Use the New iPad as a HiDPI 'Retina' Display for Your Mac

Avatron, the makers of the popular Air Display app for iOS, revealed today that they will be updating their utility to fully support the 3rd Generation iPad.

Air Display allows you to use your iPad (or iPhone/iPod Touch) as an extra display for your Mac or Windows computer. This old video shows how the app works.

The iPad acts as a wireless second screen that can be used by OS X in the same manner as any other monitor.

The developers were able to get their screen-extending app working with the new iPad with good performance. But using a 2048x1536 iPad as a secondary screen computer screen would result in very small windows, text and user interface elements. So, the team has also included support for Lion's new HiDPI mode. We've covered HiDPI mode in the past. HiDPI mode allows OS X to support high resolution monitors while retaining the same relative size for user interface elements, such as windows and buttons.

HiDPI mode will let the new iPad act like a 1024x768 point screen where each point is made up of 4 pixels. Apple has already built in support for HiDPI and some of their Apps, such as Messages, already include Retina-sized artwork that work in this mode. Users simply have to choose "1024x768 (HiDPI)" mode in their System Preferences to take advantage of the new mode.

Air Display is a $9.99 Universal App in the App Store. [iTunes] The Retina-enabled version will be included in a forthcoming update.

I use this all the time. Whenever I'm not accessing iOS my iPad is a secondary, portable touchscreen display for OSX, and it's hugely useful.

...however, wifi can barely handle the bandwidth of the 1024x768 display streaming over it. I can't imagine how it's going to cope with 4 times as many pixels. It requires a clean ad-hoc connection as it is.

Jailbroken + a jumble of tricky tweaks, you can get AirDisplay to run via the cable, and it is perfectly fast. The lag is gone and the performance is smooth and steady. If Apple would get over their impractical wireless fetish and allow Avatron access to the USB bus, this app could be the most useful app in the store. + it'd leave your net connection open to proper network traffic.

But no, instead we have another "could be awesome" with the iPad. It's selling great, sure, but Apple's still content to restrict its usefulness...

Just downloaded the mac client for this and my photoshop stopped working. My display would go dark then back to normal every few minuets. Anyone else run into this? I didn't even have it running just open because I don't have my iPad at work.

This is totally "normal." Unfortunately, no recourse for those of us that feel like this is unacceptable behavior:

http://avatron.com/forums/read.php?9,14490

Avatron's "it's not our fault" response does not a valid solution make. I'm amazed these shysters are allowed to continue selling such a deeply flawed product.

It takes a bit of fiddling to get it going, and with everything running that needs to be, it can eat up a lot of battery & run pretty hot too, but it is fast and clear as any external monitor should be, and just goes to show, if Apple would either allow Avatron to enable USB connection again (they actually did offer it for a brief period before apple made them remove it) or build this functionality right into OS X like they should, USB would be the way to go. It's fast and works great.

All Apple has to do is give a damn, and their iPad could make (even) huge(r) waves.

I use this all the time. Whenever I'm not accessing iOS my iPad is a secondary, portable touchscreen display for OSX, and it's hugely useful.

...however, wifi can barely handle the bandwidth of the 1024x768 display streaming over it. I can't imagine how it's going to cope with 4 times as many pixels. It requires a clean ad-hoc connection as it is.

Jailbroken + a jumble of tricky tweaks, you can get AirDisplay to run via the cable, and it is perfectly fast. The lag is gone and the performance is smooth and steady. If Apple would get over their impractical wireless fetish and allow Avatron access to the USB bus, this app could be the most useful app in the store. + it'd leave your net connection open to proper network traffic.

But no, instead we have another "could be awesome" with the iPad. It's selling great, sure, but Apple's still content to restrict its usefulness...

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